Minding My Own Business
by Diane Bell
The concept of minding my own business was a total mystery to me. I had a powerful God who handled births and deaths and it was my job to take care of everything in between. My specialty was doing for others what they can and should do for themselves. It was exhaustive work that received little appreciation from others, which worked out perfect for me. It was a double payoff because my martyr status was also maintained.
So what was the deal about minding my own business? I never gossiped or carried tales yet it kept coming up over and over again in meetings and in conversations with my sponsor. Finally I told my sponsor that I just didn't get it. She suggested that I start with clearly definable tasks, such as household chores. Great idea! There were two things I did not do -- mow the lawn and take out the trash. Those were my husband's jobs. Of course, it was my job to remind him to do them. "Nope," she said, "not anymore." The plan was that I wasn't supposed to even think about his jobs, much less remind him to do them. Wonderful -- I had an action plan! Being a business woman, an action plan (even to do nothing) was something I could relate to and implement.
Two trash pickup days came and went, bags of trash (the lawn & leaf bag size) were stashed in the utility room. The lawn was beginning to wave in the gentlest of breezes. And I was ready to explode. So I cheated. My husband left for work two hours before me, so we never saw each other in the morning. The only way to get to our cars was through the front door of our townhouse. The only way to get to the front door was through a long hallway. So, in my grand manipulator style, before I went to bed the night before trash pickup I piled all the bags of trash in the center of the hallway -- no way to get out of the house without seeing them.
My anger dissipated and I went to sleep feeling peaceful and pleased that I had come up with such a masterful stroke of genius to solve my dilemma without overtly breaking the rules of my plan of action. When I left for work the next morning, the bags of trash were neatly lined up in a single row along the wall!
The following week I had ample material to build a five foot high, wall-to-wall, stack of trash -- there would be no escape this week! The next morning I spent fifteen minutes unbuilding Mt. Trashmore and hauling it out to the curb for the trash collectors to pick up. I simply could not stand living with a developing health hazard any longer. In the process I was reduced to tears when I tripped in the knee-high grass and I fell down. I was beside myself and called my sponsor to see if she was free for lunch, then counted the minutes until we were to meet at noon.
Two minutes into my tale, there were tears rolling down our cheeks -- tears of laugher! To this day, I have no idea how my husband got out of the house that morning. And from that point on, I just threw the trash bags into our backyard. When the neighbors asked what was going on, I told them to ask my husband. They did, the trash disappeared, and was gone every Friday morning after that. It took a warning ticket from the city municipality to get him to mow the grass and he continued to keep it up. I clearly learned that I was not the appropriate person to motivate him to take responsibility for his household chores!
What was of major significance to me was what I learned about myself by walking through this process with awareness. I could feel the stress created by my need to control and my anger when people didn't do what I wanted them to do. I felt the discomfort and fear that changing my behavior created. The comfort of returning to my old behavior (stacking trash in hallway!). Right up to the cleansing purge of surrender (putting the trash out for myself) and letting go (throwing the trash into the backyard). It seems fitting to me that my first effort to mind my own business was to tackle a universal problem that exists in virtually every home in America!
© Diane Bell
•